Suchergebnisse

While the practice of nationality swapping in sports traces back as far as the Ancient Olympics, it seems to have increased over the past decades. Cases of Olympic athletes who switched their national allegiances are often surrounded with controversy. Two strands of thought could help explain this controversy. First, these cases are believed to be indicative of the marketisation of citizenship. Second, these cases challenge established discourses of national identity as the question 'who may represent the nation?' becomes contested. Using state-of-the-art machine learning techniques, I analysed 1534 English language newspaper articles about Olympic athletes who changed their nationalities (1978–2017). The results indicate: (i) that switching national allegiance has not necessarily become more controversial; (ii) that most media reports do not frame nationality switching in economic terms; and (iii) that nationality swapping often occurs fairly unnoticed. I therefore conclude that a marketisation of citizenship is less apparent in nationality switching than some claim. Moreover, nationality switches are often mentioned rather casually, indicating the generally banal character of nationalism. Only under certain conditions does 'hot' nationalism spark the issue of nationhood.

For those studying national belonging, elite athletes competing in international mega events offer particularly compelling case studies as they represent the nation during periods of sustained media attention and heightened emotional registers. But when compared with other types of representatives – such as heads of state, ambassadors, political leaders – they have received much less scholarly attention. This article analyses reporting of the 'Plastic Brits' debate, where elite athletes brought in to represent Britain at the Olympics were subject to ongoing scrutiny and critique. Developing an analytical framework that uses insights from Elias, Goffman and Hage, we focus on three key issues. First, how a taken-for-granted 'logic of nationalism' underlies discussions about which athletes should (not) represent Britain. Second, how the nation's boundaries are discursively marked with reference to a range of everyday features. Third, the use of different 'destigmatisation strategies' by athletes caught up in the 'Plastic Brits' debate.

Abstract
Migration studies have developed rapidly as a research field over the past decades. This article provides an empirical analysis not only on the development in volume and the internationalization of the field, but also on the development in terms of topical focus within migration studies over the past three decades. To capture volume, internationalisation, and topic focus, our analysis involves a computer-based topic modelling of the landscape of migration studies. Rather than a linear growth path towards an increasingly diversified and fragmented field, as suggested in the literature, this reveals a more complex path of coming of age of migration studies. Although there seems to be even an accelerated growth for migration studies in terms of volume, its internationalisation proceeds only slowly. Furthermore, our analysis shows that rather than a growth of diversification of topics within migration topic, we see a shift between various topics within the field. Finally, our study shows that there is no consistent trend to more fragmentation in the field; in contrast, it reveals a recent recovery of connectedness between the topics in the field, suggesting an institutionalisation or even theoretical and conceptual coming of age of migration studies.